Paul Hayward: Football is a toxic sport that is now spinning out of control

The now weekly degradation of football by racism, violence and venom must
stop. The authorities should consider real punishments – such as points
deductions and closed grounds – if we are to stop hatred killing the game

Waking to find himself the new public enemy No 1 in a year of scandal in football, 21-year-old Matthew Stott did what any self-respecting pitch invader would do and instructed his solicitor to issue a statement apologising for his encroachment in Sunday’s Manchester derby.

Stott was the chap in the sky blue Andean hat who tried to confront United’s Rio Ferdinand but was stopped by the Manchester City goalkeeper, Joe Hart.

In a cry of self-abasement and remorse Stott told the world: “I intend to write personally to Mr Ferdinand to express my extreme regret and apologies and also apologise to Manchester United and their fans. I would like to thank Joe Hart for his actions when I came on the pitch.”

Football is in such a state of fury and ferment that misbehaving fans are now copying the PR moves of celebrities.

But if Stott, who has been charged with pitch encroachment, was widely mocked by supporters on both sides, the chaos he helped to generate at the Etihad Stadium was by no means an isolated case of obnoxious conduct.

What we need, you feel, is a mass rejection by supporters groups of the kind of behaviour so many feel appalled by: backed up not with firefighting against individuals but collective punishments of clubs and groups of supporters, including points deductions and the playing of games behind closed doors, if warnings are ignored. We can’t go on like this.

The uproar is coming so thick and fast that the news cycle barely has time to dwell on each incidence of racist abuse, vile chanting, Twitter meltdown or threatening behaviour in the streets or at train stations.

Take pitch invasions, in isolation. Stott’s “moment of madness” was not the first of its type this season. In October, a 21-year-old Leeds fan, Aaron Cawley, was jailed for 16 weeks for attacking the Sheffield Wednesday goalkeeper, Chris Kirkland, who needed treatment after being shoved in the face.

As the fallout from Sunday spread, Gordon Taylor, chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association, spoke of the need for “netting” behind the goals and at corner flags, where Wayne Rooney was also pelted with objects at the weekend.

But Malcolm Clarke, chairman of the Football Supporters’ Federation, opposed the plan. “Netting is not something we feel is necessary,” he said.

“No one condones the throwing of missiles, but arrests last season were 24 per cent down on previous seasons and not many social phenomena alter that much. It is undoubtedly improving and before we start making knee-jerk reactions to particular incidents we ought to bear that in mind.”

Moral panic is easy to diagnose and not hard to exaggerate. This season, though, only the most myopic lover of the sport would deny that the national game is spinning out of control.

Even as Stott was crafting his apology with his solicitor (he is “hard working” with a girlfriend of five years), Paul Lambert was discussing the abuse he expects to receive when taking his Aston Villa side to his old club Norwich tonight.

On Saturday, a 23-year-old Swansea man was released on conditional bail after being questioned about the alleged racial abuse of Norwich’s black defender, Sébastien Bassong, at the Liberty Stadium in South Wales.

This incident flashed by on the bulletins until it emerged yesterday that Norwich have reported four incidences of racial abuse aimed at Bassong to the police.

Attention turned the next day to the mayhem in Manchester, where a flare was thrown on the pitch, Rio Ferdinand sustained a cut eye from one of many coins thrown and police charged nine spectators, from 13 arrests, as groups of fans tried to ambush each other on the way back into town.

Chief Inspector Steve Howard of Manchester police said: “To have just 13 arrests for a crowd of this size and a match of this proportion is a testament to the policing operation we put in place.”

Expert policing of football, honed during the worst hooligan years, is providing useful cover for the football authorities, who always say they are “co-operating fully” with the forces of law and order but seem unable or unwilling to fully tackle the growing problems of racism and nasty chanting, with, for example, points deductions or ground closures.

The Football Association called Sunday’s incidents “unacceptable”, with their chairman, David Bernstein, describing the crowd problems as “deplorable.” The former City chairman said miscreants must be “dealt with severely”.

Ritual denunciations are no comfort to the victims. Nor will they protect English football’s reputation around the world. The Premier League is a supremely well-marketed circus that generates billions in worldwide revenue.

There is no way yet of knowing what viewers in California, Hong Kong or Malaysia make of the English game’s current talent for disorder, but it hardly squares with the image in the brochure. There is far more to gain than lose by a concerted onslaught against corrosive behaviour.

The authorities, though, may think that by waging war they will only draw attention to the game’s problems, thus spooking TV rights bidders on distant continents.

Many who were there, though, are still reeling from anti-semitic chants aimed by West Ham fans at Tottenham Hotspur, some of whose supporters had previously been jumped by Ultras in Rome wielding baseball bats, knuckle-dusters and knives. “Hitler’s coming to get you,” was among the chants directed at Spurs followers inside their own ground.

Telegraph Sport has spoken to a Spurs supporter who was at Liverpool Street station with his 11-year-old son when West Ham fans on the lower level of the concourse threw bottles and tried to mount the stairs to get at Tottenham followers on the upper tier.

As the main throng boarded a White Hart Lane train, the boy and his father joined an adjacent train to arrive by a different route.

When West Ham fans saw the child’s Spurs badge through the two sets of windows, they began hammering on theirs and filming the boy on their phones, shouting “we’re going to get you.”

At the game itself, the child, who is studying the Second World War at school, asked his dad: “Why are they chanting about Hitler?”

The huge mass of civilised football fans — including those at West Ham – abhor these sociopathic outbursts and say so on forums and social media.

There is a community that rejects in all cases the racist abuse of black footballers and chants about Munich, Hillsborough and the Holocaust.

But there is also a growing sense that a critical mass is being reached, and that the shackles are off on behaviour that was suppressed for a long time by good policing, educational drives by clubs and, perhaps, economic prosperity, the breakdown of which often correlates to upsurges in anti-social activity.

On Sunday the six Man City fans charged for a variety of offences were 30, 21, 52, 18, 21 and 20. The trio of United fans facing court dates were 21, 24 and 22.

Two were allegedly in breach of football banning orders. These age profiles suggest that alleged trouble emanates from fans who do not feel constrained by efforts over the past 20 years to eradicate hooliganism, racism and homophobia.

If football is modern society’s great cultural obsession, it makes sense that the worst economic and social tensions would express themselves through football, especially at the highest end, where the stakes have increased exponentially over the last 10 years.

In Manchester alone, hundreds of millions of pounds have poured into the football religion, bringing beauty, drama, household names, celebrity glamour an intensified rivalry between City and United and a Ben Hur chariot race for the Premier League title.

It also brought us a problem with public order on Sunday, around 3.30pm, when Robin van Persie’s winning free-kick in added time sent City fans into apoplexy and United’s into ecstasy.

With that combustible mix, Rio Ferdinand was left with a blood-streaked face, stewards struggled to keep the two sets of supporters apart and melee moved quickly onto social media. Twitter is now the car park to which a fight moves and everyone gets involved.

Francis Lee, a vital cog in Man City’s 1968 title-winning side, has created a place on Twitter called 'Plebville’ to which he sends abusive respondents. But even he was shocked by the tide of filth that gushed into his timeline in the wake of United’s 3-2 win.

Twitter has made columnists of all its users. It is a great democracy of self-publishing that allows anyone and everyone to connect instantly with the day’s talking points and those at the heart of the action.

On days like Sunday, it is the napalm of free speech, extending the animosity for days and weeks, and causing bitterness and distress. It raises the temperature at the point where a dispute might be better with a bucket of ice water thrown over it.

Many will point out that it is no more than the authentic voice of British wit, wisdom, kindness and often anger, of which there is plenty. Illegality thrives, too: much of it football-based.

True to form, Rio Ferdinand was subjected to racial abuse on Twitter on Sunday night, like so many before him: Stan Collymore, Danny Haynes, Romelu Lukaku, Emmanuel Frimpong and Marvin Sordell, who was also shown on Facebook with a gun to his head and blood pouring down his face.

These are not trivial incidents, to be dismissed as minor blemishes on the countenance of the beautiful game. However swiftly the police react they are in danger of becoming part of the culture.

At Stamford Bridge, where John Terry was allowed to captain Chelsea at Shakhtar Donetsk while serving a domestic ban for racially abusing Anton Ferdinand, Rio’s brother, Manchester United’s Danny Welbeck was allegedly subjected to monkey chants by Chelsea fan Gavin Kirkham during a Capital One Cup tie.

At Sunderland recently, Newcastle’s senior centre-back was greeted with chants of: “Steven Taylor, we wish you were dead,” from a large section of the crowd.

Newcastle’s travelling support responded with a chant of “Jimmy Savile is [Lee] Cattermole’s dad,” a reference to the child abuse scandals on Teesside from the late 80s/early 90s.

On the pitch, players may feel they are model citizens compared to some of those who watch them, but there remains reputational damage to the game from the Luis Suárez and John Terry sagas.

The case against racism off the field is harder to make when an England captain and arguably Liverpool’s best player are found guilty of offences for which fans can be banned for life.

The furore over Kick It Out and the decision by some black players to boycott their T-shirts in protest at what they see as insufficient rigour in the fight against xenophobia also requires a mention in this context, as does the Mark Clattenburg affair, in which an allegation by Chelsea players against one of the country’s top referees collapsed amid much acrimony.

The invisible consequence of all this is a weakening of the bond between the game and swathes of its audience. Many are already disaffected by soaring ticket prices and the generalised greed of the industry.

Even many of those who have become inured to tribal hatred inside grounds are noticing a new level of nastiness.

Most disturbing is that rapid police action against racists in stadiums and on social media has not deterred others, despite the penalties and the public shame.

A sociologist might argue that many of the old rules around language have broken down, so that people are now attacking one another with maximum vitriol in the belief that insults ultimately cancel each other out.

Those on the end of Twitter assaults or chanting about Auschwitz will not want to listen to elaborate cultural theories. They will want order to prevail and civility to be defended.

The greatest lie of all is that hatred is a form of sporting passion – proof of allegiance. It is not. It kills the thing it claims to love.